(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

I don't normally engage in online debates anymore. Especially in my journal, which at times in the past has more resembled a battleground than a place for private reflection. I've explained why i've made this shift at length -- whatever objection anyone could come up with i've already heard and answered a dozen times, and the rancorous tone often intimidates people into silence who might otherwise offer input. These days, i'd much rather hear from the quiet reflective types.

I've always been afraid that unless i actively encourage dissent, i'll curl in on myself into a world of self-important navel-gazing and intellectual auto-eroticism.

But, if anything, my ability to analyze and understand and see the bigger picture has only increased since i stopped seeking out any form of online debate. The thing is, online debate tends towards cavil. Cavil: this is a good word. Look it up, study it. There are times when a discussion is enhanced by drawing down from generalities into specifics. Other times a discussion is not, especially when the "specifics" being focused on are aside from the original point being made.

So, i will tend to avoid engaging in the sorts of arguments that i just know from experience are going to devolve into cavil orgies. OTOH there are things that once said cannot be left unchallenged, even if i've given the same reply a dozen times to the same overworked talking points. So there are times i will participate even though i know in advance what is going to happen -- particularly when opponents of women's or GLBT rights come to advocacy blogs to argue against us.

And sometimes i'm glad i do, because even with the hoary crust and battle-fatigue weighing down my weary soul a glimmer of insight from what opponents are saying sometimes sneaks in, despite my carefully-nurtured protective cynicism. In this case it had to hit me on the head, because it's something i've seen in three different comments in the last two days.

And that insight is this: the people we're arguing against really, truly do feel threatened and bullied by us.

Even in typing this out, i feel an urge to respond with mockery. My first response is, "Isn't it patently ridiculous that they should feel threatened and bullied by us, when they have far more resources on their side? They have law, tradition, religion behind them; churches as old as the Roman Empire; they've thoroughly dominated the Congress, the presidency, the courts since 1980; they have foundations with yearly budgets in the hundreds of millions to advocate against us; they've long had their own networks and universities and tax exemptions... and there they are, on every street corner; there they are picketing us at every turn, there they are outnumbering us and browbeating us and coming to our blogs even, dammit, don't we get to have something to ourselves?"

I do not understand how they can possibly feel bullied and threatened by us. But that is genuinely how they feel. I do have theories about that, but i still just viscerally don't get it. If i could get it i think i could mount a more appropriate, effective, and even compassionate response.

Besides, i think the reality is that they actually are being bullied, but they don't have the courage and awareness to stand up against the people who actually are bullying them.

The first response that comes to mind wouldn't work. To point out how scapegoating of minorities works would require a primer in class consciousness, and consciousness raising requires willingness and time. Besides, it doesn't address the basic fear -- it comes across as patronizing intellectualism.

The second response -- to supplicate ourselves to appear less threatening and different -- won't work either. It doesn't matter how mainstream or kind or gentle we appear, how polite we are when engaging in yet another round of 'dialogue,' they will still be bullied, and we will still be scapegoated.

I'm stumped, but i guess this insight will lead me somewhere eventually.

Comments

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

The "all or nothing" aspect of reactionary faith does make it difficult for them to maintain questions about the unfairness of scapegoating -- which many of them can see for themselves, with a little bit of picking at the seams.

But that "all or nothing" thing works against them, too, because it means they have to spend more energy defending ridiculous things like 6-day creationism and the like. Ultimately it makes them weaker, and while they've had their run for 27 years, their grasp both on political power and on the thrall of their own children is loosening.

As for homophobia among these types being partially self-loathing -- there is some truth to that in a few cases, but i don't think it honestly explains the majority of them. Although, the whole Ted Haggard thing has really thrown them for a loop. They tried to portray the hustler he was seeing as basically a "male temptress" but i think the majority of men do not see gay sex as something they can be lured into from a state of complete heterosexuality, and must have viewed this as an odd thing to claim.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

I feel this way about debating "fit and fat" and obesity war hysteria on-line. Any objection someone can raise is an argument I've probably already addressed at length many times, and I get exasperated easily.

I understand wanting to keep your own journal relatively peaceful, too.

I am a bad, overly-emotional debater at times. I admit it. This is despite knowing that appeals to emotion and other tactics I sometimes use in the heat of the moment are beneath me.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

The repetitiveness of online debating gets really wearisome. But after a bit of it you realize the likely futility of it. I mean, i've seen a few people eventually admit "Ok you may have something there" but usually it's just rote spouting of the same tired talking points, on either side of whatever debate it is.

As for being emotional -- whether this is bad or not really depends on the topic. Sometimes the appropriate response to something is to get angry. Sometimes the appropriate response is to tell someone to go to hell, because their real goal is to insult and demean rather than "debate."

[queenofhalves]

we should make a lunch date for after the 22nd. :>

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I would very much like that. :-D

My availability remains as it usually is; email me with a couple of times you're available, and we'll set it up.

Yay!

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I've noticed this too - Christians and Republicans seems to carry a genuine persecution complex, even when they are in power and seem to have the backing of the majority. When they controlled the White House and Congress, their commentators still couldn't shut their yaps about all their "enemies", be it the "liberal media" or Hilary Clinton.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

It kind of amazes me that people really buy into scapegoating, but then the majority of people really are being bullied in their everyday life, they just don't want to admit what would be truly involved in stopping it. So a safe target, a minority, makes a good outlet.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

I noticed that, too. For six years, the Republicans held on to the Presidency and both houses of Congress. Yet, they STILL blamed everything on the Democrats.

I didn't get it then. I still don't get it. I just know that the Republicans have turned from a party that once meant strength... to a party ruled by fear.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I think it boils down to that they will be afraid as long as anybody is not like them. So it's now about us horrid liberal pagans being in power but our very existence is the thing that triggers their insecurity. Which is why the obsessions with abortion, gay marriage, anything they can't control. And our thoughts, our individuality, represents the ultimate thing that they cannot regulate.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

My experience differs from yous since I am not gay or trans. But I have interacted with fundamentalists for the past 35 or so years. For many fundies, shame is a tool they use. Or try to use. When I cannot be shamed (for being pagan, for walking into a porn store, for not supporting their "mission" etc) they get very freaked out. Many of them believe that there is only one way to look at the world, and their way is the only correct way. When people can be shamed, they reenforce the findies beliefs that those who oppose them are misguided and feel guilty for their evil ways. But when someone cannot be shamed, the fundies get very very threatened. Their singularity of belief gets questioned and that rings all sorts of alarm bells in them. In fact, they begin to feel uncomfortable in ways remarkably similar to the people they manage to shame. And this really spooks them!

[akaiyume.livejournal.com]

Many of them believe that there is only one way to look at the world

IMO, this is at the heart of the matter. Or at least the heart of how the power elite can so easily manipulate the masses. If there is only way, then one of those must be "bad" and they are afraid it is them. So they cut down others to feel like the "good" ones.

The education system trains this. Even in spite of research showing that children's brains don't tend to fall into dichotomous linear thought unless trained and that other forms of educating are more effective for more people.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Fear is the underlying basis of all authoritarianism, as is conformity. Because with conformity there is the safety of the herd. Anyone who stands out threatens the whole when viewed from that mindset. Which explains how a minority of any sort can be reacted to with such vitriol and disproportionate fear.

[collie13.livejournal.com]

I had a friend try to explain this fear to me with, I think, some success. I wrote it up in an on-line article I was then composing on same-sex marriage -- just search for the subtitle "Putting it into perspective." You might find the example somewhat illuminating? I know I did. It didn't tell me how to fix this issue, but it did help me actually see it, if that makes sense?

this is how I see it:

[ineffabelle]

Big monkey hits little monkey, little monkey hits littler monkey.

The "conservative" right IS being bullied by the New York Times White Liberal Mainstream. Instead of understanding that this is a shell game, they strike back at the minorities that these "liberals" claim to be speaking for.

The Neo-Conservatives are getting back at the NYTWLM and that's why the heartland populists still support them. Unfortunately that's their excuse to go after their real targets, us.

And we do scare them, because our inevitable liberation reduces their privilege. The NYTWLM tries to contain this in a more "good cop" patronizing way, the Neo-Conservatives go on the attack.